


Da Schmoop

by InterNutter



Category: Church (Short Film 2019)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Happily Ever After, Schmoop, Tselah mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:31:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21866122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InterNutter/pseuds/InterNutter
Summary: Ashivon and Sanga have a quiet little place that's the next best thing to paradise for them. Heavy domestic fluff. Secret Santa present for Epsilon.
Relationships: Ashivon/Sanga
Kudos: 36





	Da Schmoop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anemios](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemios/gifts).

> Disclaimer: Toastyhat/Emptyfeet owns the universe. I just play with words. A lot.

He was a stranger in his own homeland, an Intseh who was not Intseh. Tselah had helped him remember some words, but he still spoke like a child. Sanga helped him return to calm, but his first reaction to anything was always defensive.

They called him Edehvohnish when they didn’t use his name. Sanga, who absorbed most of this stuff by some kind of osmosis, told him it was a mark of respect. They had heard his story and understood he had been through much. Which lead, by a circuitous path, to the house.

Intseh tended to keep entire families in multi-generational houses. This little cottage on the far side of the larger mountain, far away from the port town where they arrived, was an anomaly. It was, to use an Intsehli term, the seed of a house. There was a hearth and family gathering room, the essential core of an Intseh home. It had an offshoot kitchen, a bathing chamber with its segregated privy, and most important to Ashivon, the bedroom.

The Intseh around them had apologised for its small nature. There was not even room for kits, they complained. Sanga, however, was greatly impressed. Both their lives had been confined to spaces smaller than these rooms. The house was, by comparison, a palace.

Ashivon’s cage had been a quarter of the gathering room. Sanga’s quarters could fit easily within the bathing chamber. The Intseh were  _ horrified, _ but he and Sanga were happy.

There was space for a garden. Once overgrown with weeds, Sanga had changed it into a lush little paradise. She had a knack for greenery, they had said. It was true. The fruit trees were once thought to be dead, but Sanga’s careful attention saw them brought back to verdant abundance and a bumper crop every turn of the seasons.

Ashivon had spent his first year there doing very little at all. He would help Sanga, if clumsily at first, because he knew she wouldn’t ever make him feel ashamed. Hands once used for nothing but bloodshed were turned to making bread, then chopping vegetables, and eventually to cooking.

He  _ liked _ cooking.

It was something he could learn without many words, through sight and scent and sound. It was something meditative, measured, and wholly the opposite of his previous incarceration. It was something that nourished, that caused life to grow. It was something quiet that he could share with those he felt a fondness for. It was something he could wash for, wash regularly, and wash  _ himself _ for. That was important, too.

All the same, it took him some time to re-introduce red meat to his diet.

He much preferred to make breads, pastries, pies, and cakes. It was the careful slowness of it, the meditative rolling and pressing. The soft hiss of dry ingredients as they poured from one vessel to another. The knowledge that any noise in the process of making was  _ his _ making and not that of a malevolent soul seeking to harm him. The knowledge that, when someone ate what he had made, they would be happy. Filled in belly and heart.

This was their safe space. For himself and for Sanga. He would come outdoors -and  _ could _ come outdoors- whenever he liked. He could stand in the sun if he wanted. He could lay down on the sunning rock on their little bit of hillside and just… watch the birds if he so wished. Most often, though, he watched Sanga.

Today, she was talking to the bees. Ashivon had a pie slowly baking in their oven and nothing much to do as the sun started to sink below the horizon.

“Yes. Yes, you clever girls,” Sanga prattled. “A honeycomb to spare. Thank you.” She turned, holding her prize high. “Look! We can make the purple jam!”

Ashivon sat up, smiling. “I’ll have to make the bread to go with it,” he said. “Sure you can spare some for me?” It was a sign of how far he had come, to tease her like this. A year or two ago? He’d never have dared call attention to her appetite for the purple jam. Sanga loved her klehto, a tart fruit that made the purple jam, and Ashivon had to buy it off of others in secret or none would make it back to their little home.

Sanga  _ tried _ growing klehro vines. There was quite a large stand of them off to the east of their garden, where they grew the best… but  _ somehow _ the fruits managed to vanish off the stands, along with the  _ mysterious _ appearance of purple stains on Sanga’s lips.

Sanga smirked at the joke and said, “Smartass. I can share it. Some of it. Just like you share my spicy fish stew.”

There was nothing in the world like Sanga’s spicy fish stew. He had tried his hand at making it, but there was that indefinable something missing whenever he did. She just had the knack for it. Just like she had the knack for plants - except for actually  _ having _ a klehto harvest.

“More bread,” he said. “Those rolls I made earlier today should slow me down. I added enough seeds to the dough to make me stop to chew.” He could poke fun at himself, too. The little things that made life worth living could be a source of joy in many forms.

Sanga shook the last of the bees off the honeycomb frame, having closed up the hive, and started back inside. “Come on then. Let’s get this honey in a jar before I pollute it with drool. That pie’s starting to smell sinful.”

He stretched as he rose. The sunshine was almost gone from the spot anyway. He caught up with her as she was slicing the tops off the honeycomb, and wrapped his arms around her middle. Ashivon took a deep breath and muttered, “Something else smells sinful.”

“I’m working,” she said without much sincerity. She already had the frame ready for the spinner and the sieve underneath catching the wax. “I want that jam.”

“I can help,” he said, laying kisses on her neck.

“You never do,” she teased. “We always end up kissing and there’ll be burned pie for our dinner.”

“You keep saying it’s better that way.” The comb was ready, and he helped her assemble the spinner, then at least  _ started _ turning the handle with her. She was right, of course. Sanga always was. Spinning honey out of the comb always wound up with them dancing together to the music in their heads, and kisses. Then there would be cuddling and smoothing their hands over each others bodies just for the joy of it… and the baking pie would be forgotten until it was  _ almost _ too late.

This time, he caught it just on the cusp of ‘a little too browned’.

The honey would drain out all the same by the next morning, and they could make sweet-scented beeswax candles shortly before they made sweet love together.

Of all their days, and all their nights, it was dinner Ashivon loved best. The chance to watch Sanga’s face light up at the sight of the pie, or to see her glow with pride as he anticipated that first spoonful of her stews. Murmurs of appreciation at the other’s hard work would soon turn to coos of joy as they tangled together in the security and comfort of their bedchamber. The garnish to all of it was, for him, the smiles he could make appear on Sanga’s face.

They were wider here. Generous. Unashamed. She had smiled so little in the halls of the Church, but when she had, they were small and nervous things. Shy, and easily wiped away by any random circumstance. Here, they were  _ real. _

Ashivon had rarely smiled before he came to the island. He hadn’t noticed until his first month in their home, when his face had hurt from doing it. He had spent a week in fear that this was some form of punishment, until their therapists had convinced him that  _ smiling was normal. _ He was just… unpracticed at doing it.

Here and now? He had plenty of practice, and plenty of reasons.

Primarily, of course, being that he was  _ home. _

END!


End file.
